Scandal? Taint nothing

Annual blame game begins over eligibility, but Lemont denies charges of skirting any regulations in earning its trip to Williamsport

August 17, 2006|By Brian Hamilton, Tribune staff reporter.

The view on Sunday was one of untainted joy: the Lemont Little League team jogging around the diamond with its regional championship banner aloft, the first Illinois team in 14 years bound for the Little League World Series.

Yet even before Lemont's plane embarked the next morning from Indianapolis to Williamsport, Pa., the e-mails and calls had begun.

They suggested these were not really Lemont kids; the majority lived in the village of Homer Glen.

They claimed it was a traveling baseball team disguised as Little Leaguers, a calculated effort by coaches and administrators to produce a World Series squad.

But by all evidence, neither coaches nor administrators nor players broke rules to produce this journey, which continues for Lemont on Saturday against the West Regional champion from Phoenix.

Since South Holland made Illinois' last World Series trip in 1992, the event's exposure has boomed--but so has its vulnerability to scandal. If the Little League World Series is an annual rite, its corollary has become one question: What price victory?

"Our kids were 12 years old by the proper deadline, they live within district, they're from here," Lemont manager Mike Hall said from Williamsport as he walked to the team's first practice Tuesday.

"Believe me, we've had so many phone calls and e-mails trying to make us look bad. It's absolutely ridiculous. Tell us what's illegal. Every one of these kids [in the tournament] plays travel baseball someplace. For them to think we're something special compared to these kids--we're not."

The genesis of the Lemont team was Hall watching the 2005 Little League World Series and believing his traveling team, the Homer Heat, could compete at that level.

Ten players on Lemont's 13-player roster live in Homer Glen, but the village is within district boundaries approved by Little League International. Though a travel team for three years, Little League rules permit players to join the league anytime. The players did continue travel baseball this summer, but they still participated in 80 percent of their Little League games, according to Lemont officials, exceeding the minimum 50 percent required by Little League International.

Officials said two notices were sent regarding all-star team tryouts, and the league enlisted Ron Guagenti, an Illinois Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Famer, to oversee them and recommend the roster.

"This particular group of young men has followed Little League International rules to the T and have met all their criteria to be selected as an all-star team," Lemont Little League President Brian Pepich said.

Twelve Homer Heat players made the cut. Hall said he did not know Guagenti before the tryout. Asked about the manner in which Lemont constructed its team, Little League spokesman Chris Downs said, "As long as the [eligibility] criteria is met on the local level, we cannot justify criticizing any of the procedures."

Peter Roby, director of Northeastern University's Center for Sport in Society, said: "I don't see any issue with it in terms of them having violated a rule or even the spirit of a rule. If that's the way the rules allow things to happen, I say good luck to them.

"If the Little League governing body starts to see this become the norm--and the likelihood is it probably will start to go in that direction--the Little League itself is going to have to make a decision as to whether a team or players have to have been playing in that league for a certain amount of time or what constitutes the spirit of the rules."

Often, though, the road to Williamsport is pockmarked. In this year's Indiana state tournament, a team from Lebanon was accused of throwing a game against a team from New Castle to ensure that both advanced from pool play.

In the New England Regional championship, the Vermont manager realized he had violated a rule by failing to use one of his players for three defensive outs. So he told his team to let New Hampshire tie the game to prolong it and avoid a forfeit. But New Hampshire's manager then instructed his team to strike out intentionally to end the game and set up a protest.

"That's what's plaguing youth sports the most: Adults don't seem to be able to keep the experience in the right perspective," Roby said. "They keep wanting to make it an adult activity when it's not."

Various Illinois Little Leagues have taken measures to relieve pressure. Mundelein resisted movements to funnel the best players to one of its two divisions to produce a more potent tournament team. Hinsdale set up a traveling team with the prerequisite of Little League participation.

Western Springs raised its league participation minimum to 75 percent of games. Tom Chlata, manager of the Western Springs team that lost to Lemont in the Illinois Section 2 championship, lamented that his team played five games together before facing Lemont, which had worked together for years in travel tournaments.

"But for me to sit here and totally blast Lemont is wrong," Chlata said. "Maybe they're doing what the other states have been doing for a long time."